


Moon, Rising

by Tiss



Series: this crown has teeth [4]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Established Relationship, Family Drama, Full Shift Werewolves, Gen, M/M, OCs galore, Politics, Werewolf Gladiolus Amicitia, Worldbuilding, werewolf!Amicitias
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-24
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:00:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26633992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tiss/pseuds/Tiss
Summary: Is it arson if it’s your roommates who start the fire?A social crisis, some politics only partly concerned with foreign affairs, and the non-political consequences of it all.Or, a crown prince and his Shield in the middle of a big ol’ mess.
Relationships: Gladiolus Amicitia & Lunafreya Nox Fleuret, Gladiolus Amicitia/Noctis Lucis Caelum, Lunafreya Nox Fleuret & Noctis Lucis Caelum
Series: this crown has teeth [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1738378
Comments: 17
Kudos: 10





	1. Don't Look Down (on hashtags)

**Author's Note:**

> *cries in broke and new job anxiety*
> 
> This fic should cover, in no particular order, the birth of a holy trinity (unrelated to Christianity), a racism crisis (unrelated to BLM), and a fight between vultures on an international scale (unrelated to WWI and/or II). As is tradition for this verse, I have no idea where I’m going with all this.

**Chapter 1. Don’t Look Down (on hashtags)**

The Insomnian werewolves are – pretty insular.

This is a well-known fact among the wolves themselves, although perhaps not quite at that level of self-awareness. The rest of the population, seeing how not many are all that aware that werewolves even exist and how rarely the topic comes up in conversation, is understandably ignorant.

Just as understandably, it all creates rather awkward situations when your normal, bog-standard humans try to purchase property smack dab in the middle of a werewolf block.

It is all rather complicated. Some wolves, those who’d faced discrimination for being what they are, would rather have no dealings with humans at all; some fall in love and marry and have kids with humans, and it’s not nearly as rare as one would imagine. In particular, the marriage of Clarus Amicitia, the then-prince Regis’ Shield, to the daughter of Margrave Lartia, a family previously known for supporting the anti-immigration statute of M.E. 684, had sparked a new wave of mixed marriages. Curiously enough, many of those new families had settled down outside of the established werewolf communities.

The communities, though, have remained – not exactly “hostile” to outsiders, but one would be hard-pressed to call them “welcoming”.

The Crownsfang is the worst of them in that respect.

His father frowns at the documents in front of him, and Gladio dares to ask, “Something wrong?”

Clarus is hardly an expressive man. If someone held a stoicism contest at the Citadel, he’d probably come out second only to Cor.

If he’s frowning, it’s on purpose.

“Have you been paying attention to the recent misdemeanor reports?”

“You mean the fights?” Yeah, Gladio has noticed. It seems like half of Crownsfang has been at each other’s throats for the past month. “There’s been a lot more lately, hasn’t it?”

Clarus grunts in confirmation and sets the papers aside. The look he levels Gladio with is serious.

“Find out why,” he orders. “There won’t be time for it when the delegation gets here.”

Gladio sketches out a careless salute and leaves his father’s office without another word.

The devastation of Niflheim’s military forces, brought about by the joint efforts of Lucis, Tenebrae, and Niflheim’s very own resistance movement, has put a stop to the hostilities on Lucian borders. The Crown and the Council are in no hurry to call back the garrisons stationed there, but the lack of activity does mean that fewer troops are taken out of fighting due to injury and fatality, which means less of a turnover between the border bases and Insomnia proper. These past few months have seen the lowest number of deployments since the beginning of the war.

It’s occurred to Gladio that, perhaps, soon they’ll be saying “the Lucis-Niflheim war” instead of just “the war”. He’s hopeful.

Several months have passed since the trip to Tenebrae and the incursion into Niflheim that had followed, and summer has left Insomnia behind. Gladio doesn’t really feel the chill yet, but the air is starting to smell like fall. This close to the sea, there’s little hope for a dry cold season, but at least it has been raining in storms and downpours rather than the typical drizzles. He’s never liked the way water just – hung everywhere.

Noct’s twenty-third birthday had come and gone. They – i.e. the King and the Council – had hoped to have the Tenebraean delegation over for the festivities, but there simply hadn’t been enough time. The vidit got been scheduled for the Autumnalis instead, and that’s only a few weeks away now, so the entire Citadel is in major crunch time, even though a lot of the work has already been done. This is a big and new enough event that people are going to be double- and triple-checking everything until the very last second.

Gladio can see why it’s necessary, even though the Niflheim Empire seems to be done for. This is politics, and a big part of politics is taking precautions and planning for the worst. And precautions, in this case, means securing allies. The Six only know what will become of Niflheim from this point on, and that’s already enough international chaos for Lucis to be extremely wary of starting a dumpster fire under its relations with other countries. The burgeoning treaty with Tenebrae is little more than a sand bucket, but a sand bucket is still better than nothing at all.

Lucis needs to be ready, even if they’re all tired of it by now.

The Fangs, at least, seems to be the furthest thing from tired.

“The guys have been tense, yeah,” one of the sergeants tells Gladio when he goes to follow up on those misdemeanor reports. “It’s the cabin fever, I’m telling you. Used to ship out every other week, and now it’s been months since they’ve been out of the city. I have them doubling down on sparring, to take the edge off. Blow off some steam.”

Gladio listens to him, hums in the right places, and then asks to speak to his squad – sans the instigators.

The five Fangs left in the barracks glance at each other in hesitant confusion.

“Well, I mean,” one of them says, “Sarge is good people, but…”

“It’s kinda nice not to get shot at,” says another.

“And, uh, I’m pretty sure that Navis had a personal reason for breaking Tib’s face,” says a third.

“With prejudice,” snorts the fourth. The fifth elbows him in the ribs.

“Navs has a girl, y’see?” the third one pipes up again. “She’s human. They’re, like, serious. And Tib’s been walking around talking shit.”

“He’s not the only one,” comments the second. “Some of the guys I know, they’re getting caught up in that – werewolf supremacy movement or whatever.”

“It’s more like a mood than a movement,” the first counters.

“Dude, they’ve got a hashtag and everything,” the second retorts. The first one snorts and mutters ‘hashtag’ under his breath, mocking as you please.

When Gladio gets home in the late evening – and it’s a little weird still, to say “home” and mean Noct’s apartments at the Citadel – he finds his prince in the study, squinting at his computer screens with something like malevolence and probably only awake through sheer stubbornness. As Gladio watches, he closes his eyes and slumps onto the desk, arms and all. The stacks of books and printouts around him slide precariously close to the edge, but don’t fall.

Gladio pushes one of the stacks to safety and then settles a heavy hand on the join of Noct’s neck and shoulder. When he rubs there, Noct sighs, but doesn’t open his eyes.

“How’re you still up?” Gladio asks; his voice comes out as a rumble in the dark enclosed quiet of the room.

“Wanna finish this,” Noct grumbles, and his eyes open, just a bit.

“Thought Iggy was taking the brunt of delegation visit prep.”

Noct tries to shake his head, but ends up just rubbing his nose against the desk.

“Thesis stuff,” he says. Gladio puts some more force into the hand massaging Noct’s shoulder, just a smidge, and Noct’s following sigh comes out as more of a moan.

“M’horny,” he mumbles.

“Do you even have the energy?” Gladio chuckles.

Noct just rolls his forehead into the desk and groans, quiet but long.

“Finish whatever idea you’re on and come to bed,” Gladio tells him. Ever since Noct outgrew the ‘don’t wanna’ excuse a couple years ago, he’s been pushing himself further and further – and complaining every step of the way, but Gladio knows it’s mostly for show. Oh, Noct’s uncomfortable with the workload and the long hours, sure, but he wouldn’t be this vocal about it if he wasn’t getting something out of it.

Namely, a motivational prod in the ribs from Gladio.

Six only know why, but Noct claims to like them.

“Don’t have any ideas,” Noct half-whispers into the desk.

“Leave it, then,” he offers. “You’re half-asleep, you’re not gonna get anything done like this. It’s late as shit.”

Noct makes some whiny sound that Gladio can’t identify the purpose of and, without looking, slaps the laptop shut.

Once in bed, Noct gets as far as slinging a leg over Gladio’s before he’s out like a light. Gladio chuckles to himself and pets his hair. He doesn’t mind. He wouldn’t have minded getting busy, either, but this is good, too – the warmth and the comfort and all the freaking peace. They’re some fifty floors up, and the walls are thick, and the only sound is the fall winds brushing against the window panes.

He’ll worry about volatile social movements tomorrow.

Here, in these four walls, with Noct warm and almost silent against him, it feels like nothing can touch them.

Gladio wakes up the next morning, and there’s a protest happening in Civic Square.


	2. how to put out a dumpster fire at home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been over a month. I know. Can't promise anything yet, but with Inktober over, I should have a little bit more time, at least.
> 
> FYI, margrave is a noble title like marquess, just more Holy Roman Empire.

**Chapter 2. how to put out a dumpster fire at home**

Gladio’s father easily takes up half of the free space in the PR head’s cluttered office, but with the way he’s squaring his shoulders in irritation, it seems more like three quarters. The remaining quarter is filled to capacity by Gladio and the PR head herself, a small, sharply dressed woman bravely unamused with Clarus’ posturing.

“Perhaps we should take this to the meeting room,” she suggests in a way that sounds more like an order, a stoic, vaguely pinched look leveled at Clarus the entire time.

“I want answers, Magna,” Clarus rumbles.

“As far as I am aware, Lord Amicitia,” the look turns icy, “we are not on a first-name basis. Furthermore, this problem concerns more than just my department and the Crownsfang. We will reconvene in the meeting room in thirty minutes.”

“I just need to know why nobody saw the warning signs.” Clarus doesn’t move.

“Because,” Magna enunciates with plenty of exasperation, “social trends that do not directly concern the Crown and its policies are _not my department’s business_.” She leans back in her chair, and it squeaks. Menacingly. “And now you’ve gone and made it mine.”

Gladio prepares himself to get out of melee range. He doesn’t know where he could possibly go, in such a narrow space, but his gut, rather unhelpfully, points out the eighth-floor window.

“Meeting room. Thirty minutes,” Magna bites out. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a meeting to arrange.”

Clarus doesn’t budge an inch.

After a few seconds where Gladio's kind of expecting his dad – or Magna – to start growling, he takes the plunge, mutters, “Right,” and squeezes past Clarus and out the door. Miracle of miracles, his dad actually follows.

Gladio had never met this Magna person before, and he’s got no idea what kind of beef she’s got with his father, but he would rather not be left alone in a room with the two of them again.

They head to the meeting room and wait there; Clarus summons Cor, and Gladio checks which Fang schedules he can rearrange in case the meeting drags on. This situation is liable to throw everything out of whack. It’s one thing to have some Fangs stuck cleaning toilets while the rest is stretched thin guarding the Tenebrae delegation; it’s another when said delegation is met with protest signs on arrival. Nobody’s going to care that the signs aren’t _about_ Tenebrae.

Gladio really hopes they can deal with this mess quickly.

Cor arrives exactly five minutes early and immediately falls into a hushed discussion with Clarus. They make no effort to include Gladio, and when he tries to surreptitiously listen in, he hears them talking in the vaguest shorthand possible – the conversation goes in one-word questions and non-verbal replies and flies almost entirely over Gladio’s head. He’d liked to think he knew at least seven different varieties of Cor’s grunts and what they meant, from _this is going south_ to _let me breathe, pup_ , but those five minutes reveal a whole new range.

Magna arrives three minutes late, with another, harried-looking woman and an older man wearing councilor robes in tow. Gladio’s seen him in meetings, but doesn’t know his name. It makes him feel a little uncomfortable, especially when the man’s eyes snag on him a second longer than the situation should really warrant. Maybe Iggy’s right. Gladio may not have a vote in the Council yet, and won’t until his dad’s out of the picture, but it might be safer to start learning early.

“Gentlemen, marshal,” Magna announces without breaking her stride and sets her laptop on the table; the other woman begins to set something up with the TV in the corner.

“Commander,” the councilor greets Clarus, solemnly calm.

“Margrave,” Clarus greets back, dry like Leide in summer, but perfectly even.

Gladio looks sideways at Cor, hoping to prompt an explanation of who this margrave is, but Cor gives him a single glance and looks away, huffing quietly through his nose. Disgruntled and still clueless, Gladio turns back to the proceedings. Serves him right, maybe, for being so unaware of the forces at court, but is now really a good time to make that point?

The TV blinks on to a social media feed, and Magna coughs.

“Well, gentlemen,” she begins, “we have quite the situation on our hands.”

The Fangs weren’t lying, there _is_ a hashtag.

The messages aren’t quite at an “overthrow the government” level of agitation, but the tension is obvious once you know to look for it. Gladio notices some recurring themes as the woman who isn’t Magna scrolls through the search results. Labor laws, discrimination, war. The response is a little wild. Gladio would’ve been surprised if he didn’t already know what herd mentality was capable of.

There are videos online already, blurry and shaky and loud to the extent that it’s almost impossible to make any sense of what’s going on in them. One, taken from one of the offices around the square, gives a decent overview of the throng milling about in it.

“How many people is that?” Gladio asks, bewildered. “About a thousand?”

“Looks like,” Cor provides. “Maybe a little less.”

It occurs to Gladio, suddenly, that, “It’s a working day. Are they all unemployed?”

The werewolves in Lucis total about ten thousand, but that includes the kids and the elderly. Discounting the minor amount living outside of Insomnia, of the six thousand employable adults, one sixth is currently in Civic Square, holding up signs and chanting at the top of their lungs. Gladio doesn’t know what to think.

“They could’ve taken the day off or called in sick. But it’s worth looking into. I can get the census bureau on that.” Magna sighs and makes a note in a book. “We’d need someone to give an informed opinion on those numbers, too.”

“That wouldn’t solve the issue,” Clarus grumbles.

“Protests don’t crop up from nowhere,” Magna retorts, crossing her arms. “There must have been prior tension, and then a trigger that made it all explode. Of course, war by itself raises tension like nothing else,” she sighs again.

“Let us focus on the more pertinent matter,” says the margrave. It startles Gladio a bit; the man hadn't said a word in all the time before this. His speech is even and measured and carries the undertone of someone used to having his opinion heard. “Knowing what triggered it will not help us get the people out of the streets. Are they making demands?”

“Nothing definite,” Magna replies, growing vaguely uncomfortable. “They’re mostly generic complaints. Job access, humane treatment and such.”

“That is a demand in its own right,” he says, calmly. He sort of reminds Gladio of a university professor – the sort that’s too full of themselves to talk in anything but complete sentences. “They are raising issues that they want to be resolved. Whether we can resolve them within the next several weeks or not, we need to make it obvious that we are not ignoring them. Communication is the first step in these situations.”

Magna gets a pensive look on her face.

“So we announce a – conference,” she asks without really asking.

The margrave nods.

“Before the end of the day, preferably,” he agrees. “If nothing else, it will give us time.”

“I’ll need to run this by the Privy Council.”

“I will take care of that,” the margrave says. Clarus side-eyes him with well-concealed displeasure that Gladio can’t figure out; the margrave pays the older Amicitia no heed.

“Right, thank you, Lord Lartia,” Magna sighs, yet again, but this one is short and almost pointed. “Before we can all go, there’s another problem that you should probably be aware of. Flavia, that other thing, please.”

The screen switches from one media feed to another.

There is, indeed, a problem.

_‘The mutts are taking over #WhatAboutUs’_

_‘You know what freaks me out the most living nearby a dog commune? You can never tell if your gon get a knife to the gut or rabies #JustWerewolfThings’_

_‘Those animals should be put in reservations, not given our jobs. #WhatAboutUs #SafeInsomnia’_

The only reaction Gladio can muster is, _‘Well, fuck.’_ He keeps it to himself.

His father and Cor don’t look too happy either, as far as he can tell. Magna looks uncomfortable, but only sort of; Gladio would rather bet on worried. The margrave appears thoughtful at best, but is otherwise unreadable.

“This is turning into a shitshow,” Cor mutters to himself, not quite low enough for Gladio to miss.

“It’s possible that removing the demonstration from the public eye will quell these moods, but it’s not a given,” she says. “Worse, the speed it’s gaining traction at is alarming. I’ll be keeping an eye on this, but I’d like you all to be prepared in case it starts to go out of control.”

Not much useful is said after that, and once the meeting is pronounced over, Gladio is left unsure of his own role in this. Some small part of him is trying to project unease on the rest of his mind, but really, is this his problem to worry about? His number one responsibility has always been Noct; therefore, this snafu only affects Gladio as much as it affects his prince. Right?

His father and the margrave are talking in low tones and hardly any words. Both seem inscrutable, but Gladio can read the tension in his father’s face clear enough.

Then the margrave turns and looks straight at Gladio, and Gladio can’t help but frown.

This old man is making him uncomfortable, and fuck if he can tell why.

The man approaches, and Gladio stands without really thinking about it. To his surprise, the margrave is not that much shorter.

"The scion of Amicitia," he half-asks, half-confirms, and Gladio nods.

"Gladiolus," he says, and hesitates long enough in offering a hand to shake that it would seem weird if he did it now. The man hasn't offered his own name anyway. "Was there something you wanted to talk about?"

For a second, it's as if the margrave is appraising him, but then the look drops from his face and he shakes his head.

"No," he says, "merely to take a closer look at the prince's Shield. Good day, lieutenant."

And then he turns around with a swish of robes that's barely on this side of dramatic, and exits the room.

Gladio blinks, and reminds himself to calm the fuck down.

Magna and her assistant had cleared out at some point, too, so he turns towards his father and Cor for an explanation of _something,_ only to find them both staring at him, faces inscrutable.

"Do either of you know what he actually wanted with me?" he asks.

The older men share a look and another one of those conversations that seem to be built entirely on nose-huffs and rolled eyes and sideways looks.

"Cor," Clarus rumbles.

"Do your fucking job," Cor bites back, exasperated.

Gladio's dad faces him, then, and, with a stony face, says, "That was your grandfather."

Lartia. Margrave Lartia. Isn't that what Magna said?

Wasn't that his mother's maiden name?

"He came to visit just the once," his father continues over the sound of Gladio's world rearranging itself. "You must've been about two, and you screamed bloody murder when he tried to pick you up. Never came by after."

"Bet _you_ were happy about that," Cor snort-scoffs off to the side, and Clarus gives him a short, but hard glare.

"I need to get back to the office," he says and heads for the door. "Cor, Gladiolus, you're on normal schedules for now, but stay alert. Do _not_ go AWOL."

With Clarus gone, Cor, face still vaguely disgruntled, turns on Gladio.

“Start paying attention in council sessions," he says, sharp. "You’re inside the room anyway.”

“What,” he grumps, defaulting to the sort of teenage bristling he’d thought he’d grown out of, “to the in-depth discussion of whether cooking services should slice fruit into wedges or cubes?”

Cor’s mouth does an aborted twitch upwards and in, but he doesn’t argue.

Gladio still gets the point, though.

He and Noct might share a dislike for convoluted politics, but he needs to be aware of these things.

Anything that's said inside the Council room is a power play. Gladio realized that fact fairly early on, with some help from his father and his pointed remarks over dinner, after he started sitting in - well, standing in - on Council sessions. He'd disliked it immediately - the many faces the councilors wore and the insincerity of every single one of them, the constant attempts to sabotage one another, just subtle enough to pass for polite by the skin of their teeth. The king is the only one who can redirect the hostility and prevent outright chaos, and Gladio used to admire him for that, until he realized that the king was playing the very same game, with the very same goals. He'd resented the entire system for a while after that.

He'd made himself get over it. He wasn't leaving Noct alone in that viper nest.

Gladio isn't entirely happy about the direction his life is going, but when did that ever matter.

He's on his way out of the PR offices when he bumps into Magna, and she grins at him, unexpected and wry. It surprises him enough that he pauses in his steps, and she halts as well, dry amusement on her face.

"So," she says, arms crossed and eyebrow quirked, "how was your first proper taste of a publicity crisis?”

“Tasted like shit,” he replies without thinking and immediately wants to kick himself for hanging out with the Fangs so much lately, but Magna only snorts delicately through her nose.

“I’ll bet,” she grins. “My first real trial on the job was like that, too. Not much direction, and a whole lot of doom-and-gloom.”

“Sounds about right,” he jokes back. “Hope my father’s not about to kick me out to the PR division for real, though.”

“I don’t think you have anything to worry about,” she says. “Still, a little awareness goes a long way. It might help you out in your own job down the line.”

“Speaking of awareness,” says Gladio, eyes flicking off to the side, “are you in a feud with my father? Because it sure seemed like that earlier.”

Magna disguises her laugh as a cough.

“If you’d asked me thirty years ago, I’d have said yes.”

Gladio quirks an eyebrow at her.

“When I was just starting out in Citadel PR,” she says with a strange mix of an old grudge and reminiscence, “my supervisor had me take on the Crownsfang as a side project. I was young, energetic, and full of ideas,” she says with a touch of self-directed sarcasm. “And your father, well – he was quite efficient in disabusing me of them.

“I suppose Lord Lartia had simply wanted me to keep an eye on his son-in-law, but I wasn’t in the habit of reading between the lines back then.”

Wait.

“My _grandfather_ ,” and that word still feels weird for Gladio to say, “was your supervisor?”

“Mm-hm,” Magna drawls. “And the department head before me. He only took on Council duties full-time, oh, six, seven years ago?” Something shifts in her face, and the look she’s giving Gladio turns just a bit softer. “Look, I know he can seem – cold, at first, but he really does care about doing what’s right.”

Gladio looks at her for a moment, a little puzzled, but can’t figure out her motives for telling him that.

“I’ll – keep that in mind,” he says at last.

Later that day, Gladio gets to kick Noct around a training hall, and gets kicked around in return. They don’t have the time to do this too often now, with Noct’s schedule the way it is, but Gladio tries. Ignis is very understanding, in spite of his flawlessly professional priorities.

They’d found some quality private time that morning and the spar doesn’t devolve into groping or anything more heated, but Noct is still flat on his back at the end of it, sweaty and panting and loose-limbed. Gladio sits down next to him, out of breath, and follows his gaze up to the ceiling. It’s not terribly interesting, but his adrenaline-soaked brain finds it riveting.

“Hey,” Noct speaks after a long minute of silently contemplating the décor, eyes slanting over to Gladio, “if I can help with handling those protests… I’ll do it.”

Gladio’s mind stutters over the idea a bit, like a stalling engine.

“Don’t you have enough on your plate?” he retorts. He knows how busy Noct is, he regularly helps Ignis _make_ that hell of a schedule. He gets front-row seats to how exhausted it leaves Noct, too. Honestly, he’s this close to doing something about it, Noct’s princely duties or no.

Noct huffs and looks up at the ceiling again. Gladio can see him thinking, through the way his jaw shifts this way and that.

“It’s important for you, right?” Noct finally looks over at him again, but then averts his eyes right after. “I, uh.”

_I’m having Feelings and I’m not in the right mood to voice them._ Gladio gets it. It’s typical Noct.

Gladio loves him, occasional emotional constipation and all.

He sends Noct off to the showers, but stays behind himself: he’s due to kick around some Royal Guard trainees next, so there’s no point in washing the sweat off. His phone’s got one missed call from an unknown number, though. It seems to be a Citadel number. He calls back.

“Gladiolus?” he hears. “Magna Lucullum, Citadel PR.”

“Right, yeah, I remember. You called me?”

“Yes, would you mind stopping by my office sometime tonight? There’s something you need to be aware of, and I’d rather not discuss it over the phone. It’s a bit urgent.”

Then she sends him a link to a news article, and Gladio begins to feel slightly queasy.

****

**_Royal Paramour: Prince’s Questionable Tastes_ **

_HRH Prince Noctis’ werewolf bodyguard – more than just a meatshield?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You could say that Magna’s supervisor… threw her to the wolves? _*buDUM-TSss*_
> 
> How many of you remembered the hint from Chapter 1 and went, "Ooh, I know what's going on here"?


End file.
